


Build Me No Shrines (or: The Daemon Archives)

by Meeshdragon, Ronabird



Series: build me no shrines [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Canon-Typical Slow Burn, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-Typical Worms (The Magnus Archives), Gen, No beta we die like archival assistants, full tma rewrite, see notes for content warnings and spoilers list, tags will be updated as we go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:00:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24540445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meeshdragon/pseuds/Meeshdragon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ronabird/pseuds/Ronabird
Summary: Jonathan Sims and his daemon, Mati, have just accepted a promotion to Head Archivist.Things go downhill rather severely from there.
Series: build me no shrines [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1767109
Comments: 13
Kudos: 73





	1. (anglerfish) few have seen it but everybody talks

**Author's Note:**

> Aaand here we go! This work is inspired by two of my all-time favorite fics: [He Says He Is An Experimental Theologian](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062757) (WTNV) and [Daemorphing](https://archiveofourown.org/series/8983) (Animorphs). Each is a full rewrite of its canon to incorporate daemons, Dust, and HDM cosmology. Each is accessible to readers who aren't canon-familiar but decide to read longfic anyway. (I can't be the only one.)
> 
> So! That's the goal here. As a result, this contains content pulled directly from canon Statements, and (in later arcs) you may see scenes carried over from my fic [these strange trails](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24349081), which is the skeleton upon which this fic is built. You'll notice that I take substantial liberties with the canon timeline, for the sake of building something cohesive and linear. Sorry if I've left out your favorite Statements! Only the most important handful have been retained, and even then, only as abridged versions.
> 
> My good friend Meesh is helping with Statement content. We're shooting for a total wordcount of 80k+, spanning all five seasons of TMA. (At the time of writing, 170 is the latest episode released. We'll see if I write fast enough to hit the limits of current canon and diverge from there.)
> 
> Enjoy!

Someday, he will look back and think: it started with the birthday party.

The Magnus Institute is an elegant building, all sweeping columns and Victorian indulgence. The Archives are effectively its basement. The air smells stale and dry; the stacks tower to a ceiling thick with cobwebs; paperwork is not so much _stored here_ as _bursting from the seams_. Loose files jut out at random, a breath away from spilling onto the dusty floor. The whole thing feels like a forest of unruly paper trees, crammed into some vast underground vault.

And, to the absolute horror of Jonathan Sims, his coworkers have decided it's the perfect place for an ambush.

" _Surprise!_ "

The office door bursts open and Jon _yelps._ The papers in his hand spill over his desk, and Mati flutters to his shoulder, crouches there with wings half-raised in case she needs to bolt again. Her eyes are very wide and very bright.

In the doorway are, of course, Tim and Sasha. Tim is grinning like a madman, his fox weaving delightedly back and forth between his legs. Sasha at least has the grace to _try_ smothering her amusement, though she's failing, raccoon perched huge and bulky over her shoulders.

Martin hovers behind them, wringing his hands to match the nervous smile. His hare is by his heel, mostly-hidden by the crush of people in the doorway.

"Happy birthday, boss!" crows Tim, and sweeps into the room with his daemon all but _bouncing_ at his heels. She flows up onto Jon's desk and settles there, apparently very pleased with herself, small paws together and fluffy tail hanging off the edge. Jon tries to fix the fox with his best startled glare, but he's still busy trying to recover from the near-heart attack.

"Delightful," intones Mati from his shoulder, dry as old paper. She shuffles her wings and straightens, apparently trying to salvage the scraps of their dignity. Jon appreciates the effort.

"You okay?" says Sasha, as she breezes in just behind. The racoon on her shoulder is shaking with silent laughter, and it is _not_ as subtle as he'd like. Martin trails her, and at least _he_ looks repentant.

"Sorry, um, Tim wanted to surprise you—"

" _Snitch,_ " scoffs Tim, without heat. He props a hip on Jon's desk to join his daemon. Jon, at a loss for how to avoid eye contact from _this many people crowding him at once,_ busies himself collecting his paperwork. Mati rides it out on his shoulder, her little talons pricking him through his shirt and jumper.

"Honestly," he mutters, to the room at large, "the bottle of wine was _fine._ "

"Pfft, as a _decoy,_ " goes Tim.

"Yes, well," says Jon. He straightens his papers again, taps them on the desk for emphasis. There is nothing else to do with his hands. "Very... elaborate of you. But, uh— very touching."

He doesn't think it sounds convincing. By the looks on the faces around him, neither do they; Martin looks as though he might want to hide.

"I, um." Jon clears his throat, feeling heat rising up his neck. "I'm aware it's been a... a rough start. Working together. But I, I'm very much... looking forward to, uh—"

He is rescued: someone raps briskly on the still-open door. Martin hurriedly scoots out of the way, hare at his heels, to make room for their more _polite_ visitor.

"Elias," says Jon, with immense relief to see someone wearing a suit instead of a grin. Someone with, presumably, more _important_ things for them to attend to.

"I'm not too late for cake, am I?" says Elias, thus dashing all confidence Jon has ever had in him.

There _is_ a cake; Tim makes a great production of striking matches for the candles while Jon fusses about fire in the Archives. There is also, to his mounting horror, _singing_. It makes Jon sink slowly further and further into his seat, arms crossed over his chest, glaring out at everyone responsible. Tim goes so far as to clap him cheerily on the shoulder, which makes him jump and Mati flutter. Sasha puts up three fingers to high-five her raccoon's tiny little hand.

Martin spends the whole thing looking profoundly apologetic. Elias watches the scene with poorly-concealed amusement, hands clasped behind his back.

They do eventually file out of his office, after. Tim goes with finger guns and a wink, fox scampering along with him; Sasha laughs her way out after him, racoon still on his shoulder; Martin lingers, apparently intent on _conversation,_ but then squeaks some apology at the absolutely flat look Jon-and-Mati give him. Jon is aware he has a very strong capacity for looking... _intense_. It's one of the best-known traits of someone with a hawk daemon, he supposes, even if Mati is hardly larger than a blackbird.

In the end, only Elias lingers.

"Settling in well, Jon?" he asks, one eyebrow arched. Not for the first time, Jon wishes the man had a more demonstrative daemon— something easier to read. The glass pendant around his neck is made to shelter an insect, but Jon has yet to meet the little soul inside it.

"As well as can be expected," says Jon, a bit more stiffly than he'd prefer.

"Not regretting the promotion already, I'd hope?"

"Not at all," Jon says, sitting up in his chair. Mati draws her wings in tight and proper, fixing their boss with her bright little hawk's gaze. Bit impolite, staring at the man instead of his daemon, but it's the best they can do. "Just, ah— well, settling in. My predecessor has certainly left a... few projects unfinished."

He does not turn to indicate the sheafs of spilling paper, the stacks of incongruously-labeled manila folders, the utter _disarray_. He does not need to. Elias merely gives a pleasant _hmm_ and nods.

"Gertrude certainly had her methods," he says, so very politely.

"It seems that way," says Jon, far more dry.

" _Well,_ " says Elias, and he clasps his hands together. "I'm sure you'll soon have it put to rights. Have you been working on those... _difficult_ files?"

"The ones with the distortion?" Jon's expression pulls into a grimace despite his best efforts. On his shoulder, Mati hunkers down low in shared irritation. "I've tried _three_ laptops, and they simply won't record. It's bizarre. Martin found an old cassette tape recorder in storage, seems to think it may be the best option we have, though it appears a bit ancient—"

"Hmm," says Elias, so very neutrally. Jon scrambles to continue.

"—but if it's, ah, the best we have... I suppose we will make do for now."

"I suppose so," Elias agrees. "By all means, go ahead. Better to have some backup than none at all."

"Of course," says Jon, and Mati shuffles her wings in relief. Elias gives them one more lingering smile, the sort that makes Jon go a bit warm with what might be embarrassment or pride or simply nervousness, and then he nods and sees himself out.

"I'll leave you to it, then. Happy birthday, Archivist."

And Jonathan Sims, newly-minted Head Archivist of London's least-esteemed paranormal research institute, settles in to record his first statement.

It takes some digging through poorly-labeled files to even _find_ Martin's proposed solution. The tape recorder is an ancient thing, boxy and black, with worn little square buttons. The present tape is blank. When he presses _record_ , it comes to life with a click, whirring its soft attentive static.

Mati resettles herself on his shoulder, a comforting light weight. Jon sighs, takes up the first file, and begins.

"Statement of Nathan Watts and Emaline, regarding an encounter on Old Fishmarket Close, Edinburgh. Original statement given April 22nd 2012. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London."

He takes a deep breath, feeling an odd spike of fearful anticipation as though he's on a cliff's edge, and begins.

"Statement begins.

"This... all happened a couple of years ago, so I apologise if some of the details are a bit off. I mean, I feel like I remember it clearly. But sometimes things are so weird that you start to doubt yourself.

"Still, I suppose weird is kind of what you guys do, right?

"Now, I don't know how well you know the drinking holes of Edinburgh, but the Albanach has a wide selection of some excellent single malts. I may have slightly overindulged. Long story short, I was violently ill around midnight, and made the decision to walk the route home. 

"I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that there are some steep hills in Edinburgh. Even by those standards, Old Fishmarket Close is exceptional. At times it must reach a thirty or forty degree angle, which is hard enough to navigate when you don't have that much scotch inside you.

"As I have mentioned, I had quite a lot, so it probably wasn't that surprising when I took a rather nasty tumble about halfway down the street.

"In retrospect, the fall wasn't that bad compared to what it could have been, but at the time, it really shook me up. Left me with some nasty bruises. I picked myself up as best I could, and decided to roll a cigarette to calm down a bit. That was when I heard it.

_"Can I have a cigarette?_

"I thought I had been alone. Emaline spotted it— the little alleyway on the opposite side of the street. It was very narrow and completely unlit, with a short staircase leading up.

"Stood there, a couple of stairs from the street, was a figure. It was hard to tell much about them as they were mostly in the shadows, though if I'd had to guess I would have said the voice sounded male. They seemed to sway, ever so slightly, as I watched.

"Writing it down now, it seems so obvious that something was wrong. But I assumed that they, like me, were probably a little bit drunk.

"As my eyes began to adjust, I could make out more details. I could see that their face appeared blank, expressionless, and their skin seemed damp and slightly sunken, like they had a bad fever. The swaying was more pronounced now, seeming to move from the waist, side to side, back and forth.

"And their daemon— it wasn't _right_. It was a... a greyhound, I think? It had to be, what with those legs that were just... too long.

"By this point, I had finished rolling a second cigarette, and gingerly held it out towards them, but I didn't get any closer. They didn't make any movement at all except for that damn swaying. I realized suddenly that the thing's daemon was moving too, gently back and forth, in perfect unison. _Perfect_ unison. Back and forth.

"For some reason the thought of an _anglerfish_ popped into my head. The single point of light dangled into the darkness, hiding the thing that lures you in.

 _"Can I have a cigarette?_ It spoke again in the same flat voice and I realised exactly what was wrong. Its mouth was closed, had been the whole time. Whatever was repeating that question, it wasn't the figure in the alleyway. And it wasn't the greyhound.

"That's when I looked at their feet and saw that they weren't quite touching the ground. The stranger's form was being lifted, ever so slightly, and moved gently from side to side. The greyhound drifted exactly the same, like they were attached by a string.

"I dropped the cigarette and grabbed for my phone, trying to turn on the torch. Emaline was swearing up a storm at me, telling me to run. But I wanted to get a better look. 

"As soon as I took out my phone, the figure disappeared. It sort of folded at the waist and vanished back into the darkness, as if a string had gone taut and pulled it back. The greyhound went with it, dragged back with its legs all gone slack, like a doll.

"I turned on the torch and stared into the alley, but I saw nothing. Just silence and darkness. I would have doubted the whole thing, honestly, would have assumed I'd just been drunk, except—

"A few days later I saw some missing person appeals go up around campus. A student had disappeared. In the photo they used for him, I couldn't help but notice that there was a pack of Marlboro Red cigarettes poking out of his pocket.

"Statement ends."

Jon breathes carefully through the simmering sense of unease. The tape recorder is still turning its little wheels, still listening. He sits back, and continues.

"Our follow-up has turned up no evidence to corroborate Mr. Watts' account. I was initially inclined to re-file this statement in the 'Discredited' section of the Archive. It will, I suspect, be housing the _majority_ of these files.  
  
"... However. Sasha did some digging into the police reports of the time. During the period when Mr. Watts' encounter supposedly took place, there were six disappearances in and around the Old Fishmarket Close. All six disappearances... remain unsolved.

"End recording."

He clicks the recording off, and Jon is silent for a long time, after. He has the uncanny feeling of... surfacing from something, of being released from an intense and attentive pressure. He has the feeling he's just been _watched_.

Mati hunkers down low on his shoulder to murmur in his ear.

"That... _was_ something, wasn't it? Just then. I felt it."

"I don't know what you mean," he says, trying to recover his voice as he does. "It was just a recording. Absolutely nothing in this story is in any way verifiable. Or even terribly _interesting_."

She shuffles her wings, and he feels her reproach echo in his mind. "Suit yourself."

In the quiet of their office, looking out at the vast clutter of the Archives, they get back to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content warnings for this chapter:**  
>  \- Eerie not-quite-human imagery.
> 
>  **Spoilers in this chapter:**  
>  \- Refers to events through 001, but draws the birthday party scene from 161.
> 
>  **Daemons in this chapter:**  
>  \- Jon's Eurasian sparrowhawk ( _Accipiter nisus_ ) Mati - Sanskrit for _intelligence/understanding_ , and a Greek term for the evil eye.  
> \- Martin's European hare ( _Lepus europaeus_ ) Brawne - for the fiancée and muse of Keats.  
> \- Tim's red fox ( _Vulpes vulpes_ ) Mina - for the Bram Stoker character.  
> \- Sasha's raccoon ( _Procyon lotor_ ) Rhodes - sharing Sasha's namesake, M.R. James.  
> \- Elias's daemon is currently unknown! Wonder why that could be.  
> 


	2. (across the street) your voice it sounds familiar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I promise this whole fic won't be Statement rewrites, folks. But, well. You know how S1 do. (Worms will start to hit next chapter!)

The problem, of course, is that the statements _do_ get... interesting.

"Statement of Joshua Gillespie and Aurelius," Jon reads out, tape recorder whirring slowly and Mati perched atop it, "regarding his time in possession of an apparently empty wooden casket. Original statement given November 22nd, 1998. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London."

He feels the shift, as he settles into reading. The way everything else... fades.

"Statement begins."

"It started when I was in Amsterdam for a holiday with a few of my friends. Everything you're thinking right now, you're right. We'd just graduated and decided to spend a couple of weeks going crazy on the continent. There were... very few points I was entirely sober.

"Still— that doesn't explain this.

"I don't remember his name. He looked... unremarkable. Very short, I guess? Brown hair? I don't remember his daemon, which is— well, you know. How do you not remember someone's _daemon?_ I suppose it must have been a small mammal, something... unremarkable. But the harder I try to remember, the harder it is to picture clearly.

"Still. I met him in a cafe, nowhere special. He said he needed someone to look after a package for him. Just until his friends could come and pick it up. It sounded like smuggling, and I didn't like it, but... He offered me ten thousand pounds, just stashed in his wallet! I counted it all, and it seemed real.

"So I said yes. The guy smiled, said he'd be in touch. And I realized— I hadn't given him an address or anything. He walked right out without any contact info at all.

"Honestly, after that, I near forgot about him. Didn't think he'd manage to find me all the way in Bournemouth, even for ten thousand. So... when I rented the new flat, I spent a bit of that money.

"They knocked on the door within the week. Two huge guys, and they also looked... forgettable. Normal. I never got a proper look at their daemons, either. They might have been wearing those little pendants people keep insects in? That doesn't seem right, two massive deliverymen with matching bug daemons. But I'm not sure the wrongness occurred to me until after.

"The package was massive. They carried it all the way into my living room, and left again the moment they set it down. Huge, long thing, very heavy. I figured it wouldn't hurt to see what was inside, and so I... I cut the cardboard away.

"It was a coffin. A great, heavy wood coffin, wrapped in chains. The key was still in the padlock.

"I was reaching for it when Auri saw the writing gouged into the wood: _Do Not Open_.

"I was terrified, at first. Who wouldn't be? I didn't even know how they'd found me. But days passed, and nothing happened. The coffin just lay there, in my living room, chained shut.

"So I learned to live with the fear. I never managed to fully ignore it, not really, but I could tolerate it. And what was I supposed to do? Who could I have told? I was too afraid of attracting attention from whoever they were. I just had to wait for them to come back.

"So I got used to it. Hell, I even used it as a table, for a bit. But here's the thing: Auri wouldn't touch it. I dared her to, a few times, just to see. But she was _repulsed_ by it. Said it was _bad._ Stayed as far away from it as our range allowed. I didn't really believe her, honestly, until— until it rained.

"It wasn't like... the groans of the dead, or anything. It was a low, gentle sound, that would come from the coffin. It sounded like singing, except that it put all my hair on end and made Auri want to curl up and hide.

"I had a _singing_ coffin, chained shut.

"But what could I do? We couldn't run from it, even if Auri wanted to. We just... we just played my music loud and tried to forget.

"And then they came back. The delivery men, and the man from Amsterdam. Even with them right in front of me, I still don't remember their daemons. They seemed shocked I was still there, honestly. I got out of their damn way to let them take the thing.

"When the screaming started, I didn't go into the room. And it stopped, after a while.

"The delivery men came back out of my flat with the thing all wrapped up again. The other guy was gone. I didn't ask why. I didn't want to know.

"So they put the thing into their van and drove it away, and I haven't seen anything like it since. I remember the van, though, the lettering on it: they were from Breekon and Hope Deliveries.

"Statement ends."

Jon settles back in his chair, feeling as though he's surfacing from somewhere deep. Mati shakes herself all over, on the tape recorder.

"Well. Bournemouth, then. Always nice to hear mention of my hometown." He sighs. Resists the urge to run a hand over his face, or scrub at the nape of his neck, to banish the— the _prickling_ feeling there, the sense of being watched. He swallows it down and continues.

"Tim was able to find record of a courier service called Breekon and Hope: liquidated in 2009, with no remaining records of their deliveries. That dead end appears to be all that we have, as I do not think I will be wasting anyone's time further with this one. Recording ends."

Jon leans over to click the recorder off, and his daemon takes the opportunity to shake herself down a second time, as though trying to clear the staticky feeling from their minds.

"Forgettable men with forgettable daemons," says Mati.

"How very supernatural," intones Jon.

Before they can dwell on it, someone knocks at the office door. Mati, on the edge of the desk, turns to fix the door with her bright hawk's stare.

"Yes?" calls Jon.

It is, of course, Martin. The man is so tall and broad that he _looms_ practically as a default state, but it's rather counterbalanced by his need to fuss and wince about every little thing. He comes bearing two mugs of tea, and very gingerly shuts the door behind him.

One of the mugs is Tim's settling-in present: "WORLD'S OKAYEST BOSS" printed in cheap, blocky type. Jon regards the thing with disdain, then shifts his glare up a bit to land on the man holding it out at him like an offering. Martin flinches, flushes, darts his eyes around like a rabbit intending to bolt. At his heel, the _actual_ rabbit half of him looks on.

"Um! Just, I was making tea," he starts, as Jon continues to regard him over the rims of his glasses. "A-and I thought you might like some? Earl Grey?"

"I _am_ busy, Martin." With a sigh, he looks down at the scattered mess that is his desk. He'll have to clear a space for the thing, and even then, it'll likely leave rings if it _doesn't_ spill and ruin his work. "Just— set it somewhere, thank you."

It's a dismissal. Martin, thank god, at least seems to understand that much. He stammers an apology, shuffles some papers out of the way— now the next two statements form a haphazard, lazy stack at the edge of Jon's desk, lovely— and sets down the tea. Then, blessedly, he bolts.

"Back to it, then?" says Mati, from the edge of Jon's desk. He sighs and picks up the next sheaf of papers.

Still that eerie attention settles on him again as he begins to read. Young woman, statement regarding... the disappearance of her neighbor, apparently. One Graham Folger and Ira.

"I do know it's a bit creepy," Jon reads, "that I'd watch him go about his day. It's the way our flats were positioned— I could see so easily into his living room.

"He had this old antique table, with patterns of thin lines snaking toward the center. Hypnotic, sort of like an optical illusion. I got a good look the one time I was over for tea, and the lines didn't seem to end anywhere. They led up to this square hole in the center— for a separate piece, he said, but he'd never managed to track it down.

"And Graham would just... spend _hours_ sitting there, staring at the table. I watched him through the window. He'd never move, or speak, or do anything much except look at the pattern. His daemon would sit on it, very nearly press her face against it, just... just staring from inches away. It was like a hobby for me, watching them watch that table.

"Then one night I realized something odd about Graham's flat window. There was something moving, very slowly, towards it. It looked almost like a pipe: thin and grey and perfectly straight. It started to bend, and I realised what I was looking at.

"It was a long, thin arm.

"Nothing has arms like that. It wasn't— it didn't make sense. But that limb hooked over the windowsill, and a long body came with it. All the joints were... _wrong._ The proportions were just—

"Anyway. The moment it was inside, the light in Graham's flat went out, and the window slammed down behind it.

"I phoned the police. Told them I'd seen someone suspicious climbing in through a window at his address, and hung up before they could ask me who was calling. And then I waited.

"When the police arrived, I saw someone open the door to let them in. It wasn't Graham.

"I can't stress enough how much this was not Graham. He looked completely different. He was maybe a few inches shorter and had a long, square face topped with curly blond hair, where Graham's had been dark and cut short.

"But— and this is the reason I'm here, really— but _he was holding Graham's daemon._ I, I know how that sounds, how _disturbing._ But Ira was just hanging off his shoulder, the way he'd hang off Graham. He didn't even seem to _notice_ he was touching some stranger.

"I watched as Not-Graham let the two police officers in. They chatted awhile. He showed them something— a passport, I think? And they just shook his hand and left. Ira stayed on his shoulder the whole time.

"He looked up at me, then. This cold, toothy smile spread across his face. And he reached up and petted Ira, right in front of me.

"I moved out a week later. Statement ends."

Jon sighs as the pressure begins to leave him. "We've been able to turn up very little of interest, here. All digital records we've retrieved of Graham Folger and Ira match the latter description: a short, blonde man, who seems entirely at ease with his sloth daemon.

"Recording ends."

They think for a while, after he clicks the recorder off.

"An imposter," muses Mati. "One that _steals daemons_ , apparently."

"A disturbing concept," Jon agrees, impatient, "but, again, hardly verifiable. What would 'stealing a daemon' even _mean?_ It's— it simply can't be done. If the man's daemon remained the same across both 'selves,' then it was the same man."

"Hmm," goes Mati, but she has no clarity for them. Jon sighs and takes up a new stack of papers.

Forgotten, the tea goes cold on his desk.

On his way out of the office, headed home for the evening, he overhears talk of Gertrude Robinson.

It's just Rosie, of course. Institute receptionist, short and curly-haired and irrepressibly cheerful; her daemon is a pretty brown cocker spaniel at her heel. Jon regards her as the bland but tolerable sort, who doesn't pay much attention to anything past her pay grade (which is, by nature, _most_ things) but can be counted on to be at least moderately competent at basic tasks. She flashes him a smile in the hallway, phone to her ear.

"Oh, there's the new Head Archivist," she's saying, "it's Jon Sims from Research, did you hear he got it? Gertrude was, you know—" she gives a tinny, polite little laugh that Jon takes to mean nothing good, "she _was_ a sort, wasn't she! Certainly didn't stand for nonsense."

Jon snorts to himself as he carries on down the long and echoing hall. Mati flits along behind him.

If Gertrude Robinson didn't stand for _nonsense_ , and left the Archives a hair's breath from collapsing in a mess of unsorted paper... well. He hates to think how _he_ will be regarded, by comparison.

He hears the last snatches of conversation on his way out the door.

"Shame, what happened to her. —Well, that's it, isn't it? They _still_ don't know."

The usual gossip. Not worth bothering with.

Jon stamps down on the unease and steps out into the London chill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content warnings for this chapter:**  
>  \- A monster that sneaks into people's homes.  
> \- Someone being replaced and authorities do not notice.
> 
>  **Spoilers in this chapter:**  
>  \- Refers to events in 002 and 003.
> 
>  **Daemons in this chapter:**  
>  \- Jon's Eurasian sparrowhawk ( _Accipiter nisus_ ) Mati - Sanskrit for _intelligence/understanding_ , and a Greek term for the evil eye.  
> \- Martin's European hare ( _Lepus europaeus_ ) Brawne - for the fiancée and muse of Keats.  
> \- Rosie's cocker spaniel ( _Canis lupus familiaris_ ), because of course Elias thinks secretaries should have dog daemons.  
> \- Graham and Not-Graham's brown-throated sloth ( _Bradypus variegatus_ ) Ira - meaning "watchful," in reference to this guy's Eye vibes that I flagrantly cut. Enjoy the implications of pain to come. : )


	3. (squirm) she has turned my heart black

At least the statements continue to get more interesting.

The next one is about a book. _Ex Altiora._ Found in a charity shop, apparently, but seemingly hand-bound and written all in Latin. The man took it to get assessed.

"Pinhole Books," reads Jon, Mati perched again on the tape recorder, "had a sign on the front that said _By Appointment Only._ I'd been told to ask for a woman called Mary Keay. When she answered the door, though... she wasn't what I was expecting.

"There was only half of her left.

"The woman who opened the door was very old and painfully thin, and her head was completely clean shaven. Every square inch of skin, her _whole_ body, was tattooed over in some ancient script. Sanskrit, maybe?

"She didn't have a daemon. I don't mean that he was hiding, or that she had an odd range. I could _tell._ You could look at her and know. The _wrongness_ of her, the sense of something _broken_ , made me want to vomit. Her daemon was just... gone.

"She shouldn't have been able to walk and talk, like that. Being just a body. But— she did. And she led me upstairs.

"I nearly ran. I don't know how I managed to share a room with her. But I needed to know about the book. It— it made me dizzy whenever I tried to read it. The images made me feel I was going to fall into them and just keep falling. From the first moment I'd tried to read it, there was this... this ozone smell, like just before a storm, that followed me everywhere.

"It seemed right, somehow, to have a woman like this know about my cursed book. So I followed her in.

"The shop was a labyrinth of books, stacked floor to ceiling. Mary Keay somehow made her way through it to press a cup of tea into my hand. She saw the way I flinched from her, I know, and she just snorted. It was an unkind, impatient sort of laugh.

"She asked me to tell her about my book, so I did. I told her it seemed at least secondhand: there was still a bookplate inside the cover. _From the Library of Jurgen Leitner,_ it said _._

"Her eyes lit up at that. Said she'd send her son, Gerard, to come and have a look.

"I was terrified her son would be like her— daemonless and wrong. But I had no other option. I needed to be rid of the book. So I went home, and while I waited for Gerard, I looked up the Keays. I thought maybe I wouldn't be as afraid if I knew why they were like that. Daemonless.

"I didn't expect to find a news article from 2008 about Mary Keay's murder.

"The photo was her, except she had a full head of hair, no tattoos at all, and a goshawk daemon on her arm. Cause of death was apparently an overdose of painkillers, but it was judged a murder due to 'extensive post-mortem mutilation.' Large pieces of her skin had been... removed.

"The son Gerard had been arrested and tried for it, apparently, but acquitted in the end. And now he was coming to my house.

"That's when the knock came. It'll tell you how badly I wanted rid of that book, that ozone smell, that I opened the door for him.

"I was incredibly relieved to see he had a daemon. She was a large crow on his shoulder, and certainly matched the look of him. He wore a black leather jacket, his hair was dyed an artificial black, and he had a very tired sort of look.

"He bought the book off me for five thousand pounds. I nearly laughed! I would have sold it for a fraction of that. But when I handed it over, he just dropped it in my metal waste basket and pulled the lighter fluid out of his pocket. He dropped in a match.

"The ozone smell vanished almost immediately. We both watched it burn.

"Statement ends."

Jon sits back. The tape recorder, under Mati's little talons, is still running.

"Well," he says. "It seems the world is not yet rid of the works of Jurgen Leitner. I'd hoped we'd seen the last of his collection with the incident in 1994, but apparently some volumes have slipped past the Institute's radar. I will be speaking with Elias about updating the ongoing file."

He clicks the recording off. The pressure lifts, and silence falls.

"Leitner," he breathes.

They are quiet for a long moment.

"Well," Mati says, eventually, "at least we know _this_ one is real. Let's send Tim or Sasha to do some followup?"

"Sasha is engaged with following up the," he gestures vaguely, impatient, " _daemon-stealing_ statement. And Tim is busy with a statement about... worms, apparently?"

"Have Martin do it?" she suggests.

There is a beat as they both consider.

"No," says Jon, and "no," she chimes in unison, and "Tim can do it," they say together.

At that precise moment, someone gives a tentative little rap on the office door.

Mati's laughter shivers in his mind, and Jon sighs heavily. "Yes, Martin?" he calls.

The door edges open, and there is Martin, big enough to loom but hunched enough to just look soft and hapless instead, wincing his way into the office with two mugs of Earl Grey.

"Tea?" he offers.

" _Thank_ you, Martin," sighs Jon. "On the desk, then, I _am_ working on something."

"Right!" chirps Martin. He sets it down and flees, probably back to something else that is _not_ his actual workload, judging by how much of it he ever gets _done_.

"Tim, then," Mati reminds him, and Jon sighs.

"Right, yes, we'll put him on that one." He sorts a sheaf of papers away, picks up another. "What's next?"

The next one is, to his dismay, even _more_ worrying. Soon the tape recorder is whirring and Jon is halfway through the first page, tightly gripping the paper, Mati trembling under the weight of some unseen stare.

A frightened girl, telling her story to the man who's made the statement. That makes this a secondhand account, and yet Jon could still swear he _sees_ it as he reads: a damp London night, streets empty, the young woman's little catch of breath as she spots the body in the street.

"It was a woman in a red dress," he reads, "lying face down on the pavement. Her dress seemed to shift in the orange glow of the streetlamps, as though something was moving underneath it.

"And her daemon was... was wrong. Was _sick_. It was a rat, lying listless beside her, and it seemed to shudder with the movement of the _worms_. There were dozens of the little things, glinting under the streetlight, moving through its dark fur. Metallic silver worms.

"She went closer, of course, not believing it. Why would— _how_ would a daemon be infested with _worms_? Fleas, ticks, things like that shouldn't bother with a daemon.

"And then the woman and daemon stood up, all at once, very fast. And they came at her.

"When she awoke in the street, she could find no sign of injury, but she felt... wrong. Ill. And it only got worse over time.

"I did try to help her. I offered to drive her to the hospital, but she said she'd already been. She just wanted a distraction, I think. Her daemon was a beautiful little gazelle, the sort that only comes up knee-high, and he seemed so _anxious_ , so unsteady on his feet. I didn't really expect her to kiss me.

"We, ah... we did have sex. I know— she was vulnerable, and I asked over and over if she really— but, well. It's only after that the stomach cramps started, and she started screaming. I went to the kitchen for medicine, to see if I had anything to help.

"She'd stopped screaming, when I got back. She had... she...

"I need you to understand. Why I had to set the whole flat on fire. Why it was better to stand out _naked_ in the winter streets than stay there another second.

"It was all worms, in that room. Where she'd been lying, it was just... just meat riddled through with worms, hardly in the shape of a person at all. Hundreds and hundreds of silver worms.

"That's not why I did it.

"I did it because...

"There was still a gazelle. The shape of a gazelle, anyway, lying there on the floor, every inch of his body crawling with worms.

"The flat burned for a very long time."

Jon breathes, shaky and careful, and clicks the recording off.

" _That_ sort of worms. This is about Prentiss, then."

"Two real statements in one day," hums Mati, thoughtful. She gives her tail a little shake, and he has to hide his smile; they shouldn't be _this_ overtly pleased to have proper stories of death and destruction coming in. "Jane Prentiss has been on the Institute radar awhile. I was starting to hope she'd just... gone away."

"We all were." He reaches up to rub at his face. "But the likes of Leitner and Prentiss are what we're here for. We shouldn't apologize for doing our _jobs_ , instead of being bogged down by—" he gestures out to the Archives at large, the explosion of ancient paperwork, "nonsense about _ghosts._ "

"Another one that needs real followup, then," says Mati. "I don't know that putting Martin on a Prentiss statement is a good idea. These are actually important."

"And actually deadly," he mutters. "Agreed."

She hops to his shoulder in a neat little sweep of wings, and he goes to find the archival assistants.

Martin is off somewhere, probably doing nothing helpful, possibly fixing another unnecessary cup of tea. Tim and Sasha are at their desks, and both ostensibly working. Sasha has headphones in, is drumming her fingers absentmindedly on the desk as she reads something on her computer screen, her raccoon daemon a fluffy bulk over the back of her desk chair.

Tim, though, is just rifling through papers and looking bored when Jon steps from his office into the Archives at large. He perks up immediately, and on his desk, his fox daemon's ears swivel immediately toward Jon.

"Hey, boss," he says, and his fox begins that amused tail-flick Jon is so very familiar with. "Got something for me? Something _spooky?_ "

Jon sighs. "Can we please—"

Tim draws a hand over his mouth, mock horrified. "Oh, _no_ , did I say the S-word? Can't have anything like that here in the Institute's _creepy basement_."

At her desk, Sasha looks up and pops one earbud out. "What? _We're_ not the creepy basement. That's Artefacts Storage. Believe me, I did three months there before I transferred."

"And you _lived_ ," breathes Tim, faux-reverential. Sasha bats her eyes at him. Jon stifles the growing urge to bury his face in his hands.

"Artefacts Storage," he says, professional as he can manage, "is not _generally_ dangerous so long as proper containment protocols—"

"Right, right," agrees Tim, breezy grin falling back into place. "Secure, contain, protect, that's the company motto."

"It's really not," says Jon, tiredly. " _Academic research_ is more the point."

Sasha's raccoon chitters a little laugh, and she leans in further, conspiratorial. "Well, that's the _official_ line. You should see some of the things they've got down there in concrete boxes."

"The point!" Jon is raising his voice a little, here, in desperation. "Is that there _is_ work for the both of you to be doing right now."

"Of course," agrees Tim, and he reaches out to scritch Mina behind the ears. The fox daemon gives a soft little laugh as she leans into the touch. "What ghost stories have you brought me today, boss?"

Jon drops the worm statement on his desk. The manila folder gives a fairly satisfying little _whap_ onto the tabletop.

"We've found another Prentiss victim," he says, flatly.

That shuts them both up rather fast.

"Christ," says Tim, grimacing. "You're giving me _more_ worms?"

"I could take it," Sasha says, leaning in so far now Jon is waiting for the moment her chair unbalances. Rhodes, her raccoon, seems to be leaning the other way in a desperate bid to keep her from toppling over. "I don't mind Prentiss statements."

" _Sasha,_ " says Tim, scandalized. "You _ask_ for the wormy ones? I thought I knew you."

"I like the real ones," she says. "And Prentiss is a known entity. I mean, a proper _entity._ Whatever she is, it isn't human."

Jon snorts. "Let's not get carried away. Though we seem to be dealing with a very aggressive form of parasite—"

"Here he goes again," says Tim to Sasha, despairingly. She nods her sympathy back to him.

" _—_ that does not mean it is _supernatural,_ " Jon finishes, through gritted teeth.

"Jon," says Sasha, "you _know_ what the Prentiss statements are like."

He does. He's just read one. He resolutely ignores this fact.

"We have no _evidence_ ," says Jon, primly, "that this is anything but an unpleasant and yet-undiscovered, but still _mundane_ , danger."

Tim sighs. "And there he goes again."

" _Tim,_ " says Jon, tone a warning. It's the _I_ am _your boss_ voice, and he hates how often he has to use it.

"Right, right," says Tim, waving him off. "Sorry, boss. Carry on. Enjoy your worms, Sasha."

He leaves them to it. Mati is silent on his shoulder as they get back into the dim little office, settle back at their desk, and look down at the sprawl of paperwork before them.

"Right," sighs Jon. "What's next?"

The next one is, of course, nonsense about ghosts. He honestly loses track of what's going on a few minutes into the recording: spiders and fire and an old house in Oxford, at Hill Top Road.

"Fine," sighs Jon, clicking the tape recorder off. "That's enough for today."

Rosie isn't in the hall when he goes home, this time. He tries to pretend he isn't disappointed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content warnings for this chapter:**  
>  \- Brief mention of death and mutilation of a body (Mary Keay).  
> \- Burning of a cursed book.  
> \- Brief mention of sex.  
> \- People and daemons being infested with worms (Jane Prentiss & victim).
> 
>  **Spoilers in this chapter:**  
>  \- Refers to events in 004 and 006.
> 
>  **Daemons in this chapter:**  
>  \- Jon's Eurasian sparrowhawk ( _Accipiter nisus_ ) Mati - Sanskrit for _intelligence/understanding_ , and a Greek term for the evil eye.  
> \- Martin's European hare ( _Lepus europaeus_ ) Brawne - for the fiancée and muse of Keats.  
> \- Tim's red fox ( _Vulpes vulpes_ ) Mina - for the Bram Stoker character.  
> \- Sasha's raccoon ( _Procyon lotor_ ) Rhodes - sharing Sasha's namesake, M.R. James.  
> \- Mary Keay's northern goshawk ( _Accipiter gentilis_ ) Cully - for T. H. White's murderbird of the same name.  
> \- Gerry’s carrion crow ( _Corvus corone_ ) Lenore - for a character in a certain Poe poem; someone beloved, now lost.  
> \- Jane Prentiss's rat ( _Rattus norvegicus_ ).  
> 


End file.
